


Perks

by redonthefly



Series: So No One Told Me [1]
Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:09:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3759100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I just want a latte,” Kristoff says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perks

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, this would be first in the So No One Told Me series. It's the meet cute, basically.

If pressed, Kristoff will say here are two good things about living this far north. The first is that the air really does feel almost weirdly clean: it’s like there might be some truth to all of those commercials for cleaning products and mountain spring water that claim to bottle freshness, as though somehow the scent of green is actually a thing, and that if you live here long enough, eventually your skin will start to breathe like a plant.  


That’s one.

The other is that in the off-seasons, those few weeks of in-between times when the school isn’t in session and the tourists haven’t really cottoned on to the weather yet - the brief glimpses between true summer and true winter or the rush of fall term and the apathetic pace of spring - those weeks, Arendelle is the most beautiful place on earth.

The rest of the time. Well.

For one thing, it never seems to stop snowing. For at least 20 of his 22 years he’s convinced his feet have been wet, and the only reason it’s not the whole 22 is because his mother used to carry him around in one of those baby-backpacks. Basically, the seasons go: It Very Recently Snowed and the Ground is Still Soggy, I Think I Saw a Flower, What Is That Shining Thing, Pumpkin Everything, Oops I Forgot My Chains, and several months of Deliver Me From This White Hell.

Naturally, he’s chosen a career where he spends the majority of his time out of doors, but no one has ever faulted him for that logic, thankfully enough.

No one really pays all that much attention to him at all really, and that’s fine by him. College towns are strange, tourist towns moreso - the population and economy are always completely in flux, the demand for services wildly variable depending on the season, the whole demographic changing every 6 months. Kristoff spends half the year dodging Hybrids from the city slipping and sliding up the mountain roads or directing lost hikers in the summer, and the rest weaving his way through crowds of semi-awake undergrads and stoned upperclassmen.

For the locals, this is just the rhythm of life in the Adirondacks. Kristoff has spent his entire life here, and he lives and breathes for the peacefulness of clearing trails, for long afternoons in the fire lookout towers, for evenings checking water temperatures in the upper lakes, for the nights spent under the stars.

Kristoff’s heart was made for the mountains.

It’s a solitary life, but that suits him fine - he’s got his grandparents to visit with on the weekends, the regular check-in meetings with the District Forestry office, and a couple contacts and friends in town that he’ll run errands for, and sometimes just meet up for a pint.

So it may seem lonely to other people, but it suits him fine. Has for years, and he doesn’t see that changing.

What he was not, not, built for standing in line at the University bookstore, getting elbows and the corners of textbooks jabbed into his ribs as eager students push past him in the crowd.

He’s been up since 4AM checking the cross country ski trails, and all he wants is to drop off the package he’s delivering and have a coffee that he didn’t brew in a tin can coffee pot.

And then maybe sleep for an eternity and a half. Or just an hour. He’s flexible like that.

“I’ll have, uh, one Grande, Quad, Nonfat, One-Pump, No-Whip, Mocha and one, Grande Chai Tea Latte, 3 Pump, Skim Milk, Lite Water, No Foam, Extra Hot,” the guy in front of Krisoff says, and he looks up from where he was watching his boots drip mud in a pattern on the floor just in time to see the Coffee Girl’s look of confusion.

“Wait,” she says, holding up one hand. “Did you just ask me for a drink with ‘lite water’?”  The back of Fussy Coffee Order Guy’s head bobs forward, and she shrugs. “You got it buddy,” she says, and flips a hand towel over her shoulder, heading toward the espresso machine. Halfway into the turn, she catches Kristoff’s expression over Fussy Guy’s shoulder, and winks.

Coffee Girl is short enough that the raised counter of the coffee bar makes her look even tinier as she moves around the espresso machine, tamping grounds into the press, flipping buttons here and there, and pouring glugs of Chai into a paper mug. She’s got long red hair tied back into two braids, would up in some complicated looking knot with what might be a blue colored pencil.

Kristoff checks his watch. 8:45AM. Fussy Guy accepts his offered drink and shuffles off, and he’s next in line - the whole cafe/coffee nook is raised a few inches from the rest of the floor, so when he walks up the counter, he’s eye level with Coffee Girl, her weird braided hairdo and a t-shirt with a Van Gogh print on the front of it peeking out from the university logo apron.

“Lite water, are you kidding me?” Coffee Girl says, half laughing as she haphazardly dumps change into the register, then leans down over the counter conspiratorially. “One-pump, No-Whip, Skim-Milk, good  _grief_. Soo _oo_  what’ll it be?” She says this all very quickly, with the irritatingly good spirit of the highly caffeinated.

Kristoff gapes, and Coffee Girl’s -  _Anna_ , the name badge pinned to her shirt says ‘Anna’ - eye’s grow wide, and she rears back abruptly.

“Ohhhhh my god,” she moans. “You were gonna order one too. God, I’m awkward. Look, I’m sorry, let me just -”

“I just want a latte,” Kristoff says.

Anna is already grabbing syrup bottles off the rack behind her and clattering them down on the counter. “Do you like any of these? I’ll add an extra pump for free - no one cares around here really - wow, I am, like, what I horrible thing to say, I mean,  _I_ like sweet things, but it’s such a  _pain in the_.”

She stops abruptly. “Latte?”

“Just a latte. Or drip, black, it doesn’t matter, just...coffee.” He pauses, then adds, “please.”

Anna’s eyebrows raise, just a little, and she nudges the bottle of raspberry flavoring out of her way with her elbow, reaching out for the nearly carton of milk.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” she says over the sound of the steamer. “New student?”

Kristoff snorts. “No. Just on campus running an errand.”

“I don’t mean to assume or anything. Most people that come in here are, like, zonked. You look like you had a rough night.”

“I had a rough  _morning_ ,” he says, watching as she pours the milk over espresso shots.

“You’re in the right place then,” and she grins, snapping on a to-go lid and passing him the cup. “$2.50 please.”

He passes her the bills and change, watches as she hip checks the drawer of the register closed, and is still standing there, holding the warm cup in his hand like an idiot when she says, sounding puzzled, “Did I forget something?”

“OH. No, sorry. I’m going, thanks.”

“Come back sometime, sleepyhead,” she says. “I make a good latte, you’ll see.”

Kristoff escapes, shaking his head at himself and winding his way out of the stacks of books and spiral notebooks, the pockets of undergrads with dark circles and frizzy hair, and out the front door. It’s snowing, because of course it’s snowing, but it hasn’t gone slushy and grey quite yet; instead it frosts and guilds the brick and stone, and the bare limbs of the trees that line the quad.

Everyone always goes a little nuts over the first snow of the year. By now, everyone just wants to be inside with something warm to drink, so it’s mostly still.

He looks at his cup. Since he never said his name, and paid with cash, Anna’s scribbled  ‘Blondie’ in messy Sharpie letters on the side of the paper cup.

He takes a sip.

It’s not bad.


End file.
